Played around with the Alpha for a bit and so far, it seems like a good alpha. Functional enough on my computer and the game play is there. Cosmetic Issues: It would be really nice to incorporate the blue and yellow colors for metal and energy onto the appropriate structures. I like the current designs so far, but it'd be nice to have some visual cues to differentiate them further. Either have some "view windows" or "material pipes/veins". And you could even go further to indicate the differences between producer and storage buildings: Pulsing color indicates a production building and either a changing "fill level" or gradient intensity for the storage buildings. UI Issues: A bit unresponsive at times, but I think that will be resolved over further development. Is the UI operating in it's own thread? Really need the ability to map out full 6-axis controls for map control. And the ability to align your camera to an axis is going to be needed. It'd also be nice to have the option to "snap-to" some kind of polar coordinate system. Need some more confirmation indicators when queuing actions. Idea: Scroll wheel to adjust unit build queue. Hover over unit and scroll up or down to adjust. Clicking is fine, but to scroll would be divine. Engine issues: It's an alpha, but it seems to run well enough on my i7 920, 18GB, ATI HD4890 setup at 1920x1200. I must congratulate the team on having a resizable game window that doesn't blow the game up. That said, the texture pop-in is quite noticeable. My graphics card may not have the most memory, but it should be able to store detailed enough textures. I think the tolerances are a bit to tight on when the game should unload and load map textures when you zoom in and out. Gameplay issues: Laser towers are nastily over powered. Units seem a bit too fragile at the moment. I'd hate to have the game eventually devolve into amassing hordes of units as fast as possible just to overpower one laser tower that pops one every second. I really appreciated the slower, more calculating pace of Total Annihilation. Units were tough enough to survive a few hits from Tier 1 defenses and retreat when the unit composition wasn't right. Exploratory skirmishes were quite useful. Giving the units more strategic weight makes a difference between having 10 units be a fearful sight and a 100 being a joke. Numeric Bloat. The figures for both metal and energy seem like they could be factored down by 10. Probably doesn't make much difference game wise, but makes it a bit easier for the human player to grasp. The D-Gun needs to make a comeback. It was one of the best ways to curb a punk trying to do an early game rush and made players really prepare before assaulting a base when the commander was home.
I don't think Uber disagrees with any of these points. Their priority is working the kinks out of the engine though. Still, this type of feedback is good.
